Maranoia

I am now just over a week away from London marathon, and of course the maranoia has kicked in. My particular form of pre-marathon freak out seems to be around my shoes. I do a lot of cross training in my running shoes, I know that I shouldn’t, and I do own “proper” bike shoes, but the clips on them aren’t compatible with a spin bike, and I changed my pedals when I arrived in Ann Arbor because I was scared of skidding on the ice or falling down a pothole and not being able to unclip quick enough to avoid disaster, (also my bike shoes don’t have a whole lot of room for extra pairs of socks which are an essential requirement for cycling in Michigan in the winter). And aside from spinning I sometimes run to the gym and don’t want to take my gym shoes or they won’t fit in my bag usually because I have packed too much food, so yeah if in doubt I default to my runners. All of this is really just to say that despite being just over a year old my running shoes have seen better days.

Ruined shoes or extra-ventilation?

The rational part of me knows that they still have miles left in them, and they are super comfortable, so the best course of action is to wear them for the marathon then invest in a new pair for my next sporting endeavor. However, approaching a marathon turns us all into crazy people, and there is a part of me that is worried that the hole in the toe of my shoe is going tear and reduce my trainers to flip-flops mid-marathon, or that the wear-and-tear is going to cause me to develop some sort of horrific injury, and that what I really need to do is buy new shoes and wear them constantly to break them in over the next 9 days. Of course I am not going to do this, but I do remember feeling exactly the same way before Barcelona about the predecessors to these shoes (although they were DEFINITELY in a better state than mine are now).

The point of this whole post is that its totally normal to start worrying about silly things like this before a big race (and big doesn’t mean long it means whatever is big to you). We all have our own way of turning our nervous energy into an imaginary problem, but the only thing that is important is to just ignore it. Even as I was writing this post I had a thought in the back of my mind that maybe 9 days is enough to break in some new shoes but now that its here in black and white that I will be running the marathon in my battered Saucony’s I am committed to doing what I know is the most sensible thing, even though I could very easily tell myself otherwise.